


Replacements

by aphrodite_mine



Category: The Inside (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Dubious Consent, F/M, Sexual Abuse, Yuletide 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:24:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rebecca knows what happens in the dark to little girls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Replacements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prozacpark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prozacpark/gifts).



> Thanks to piperrhiannon, celeria, and midnightxgarden for the beta work. I also worked on this piece with my creative writing class at the time.

**1: Birth**

Becky liked the way the sun caught on his ring – shaped like a horseshoe, made of tiny glinting diamonds. She liked his smile, his teeth that weren’t so straight and fake like all the other grownups she knew. He bowed to her, playing the footman, as she hopped into the stirrups again and again, regal.

And when the sun dripped lower and he whispered to her – scented sweet, and afterwards, like mint – the promise of ponies, she grinned, giddy and willing, whispering back, her tiny hand to his ear: “357 Port Cale.”

\--

Rebecca knows what happens in the dark to little girls. She knows that every day, Becky shuddered less when she heard the key in the lock. That food became delicious, and then dry like sawdust. She knows the feeling of half-moon diamonds against her lips (“Kiss for luck.”) and silk against her skin. Becky doesn’t know any of it anymore, not since it all went up in a flash of flame. Rebecca knows that too.

\--

For weeks, Becky dreamt of moonlit rides on unicorns, on Shetlands, on stallions. The scratch at the window stirred her, and she rose, ready to claim her prize. A breeze from outside brushed blonde hairs back from her cheek, and the man touched her face. (“Down the ladder, quiet now.”) He was the picture of a gentleman.

At least, that’s the way it happened in the movie adaptation.

**2: “Tell me about the killer.”**

Before Margaret Alvarez clawed the skin from her face, she was an agent worth knowing, though no one did. She wasn’t the type who hung around for drinks after work. More often, she tugged her hair back and ducked into corners, escaping fake smiles and whatever was implied by the term “real world.”

Every other weekend was time with her kids, two boys, aged twelve and eight, and she had to pull herself out of the darkness with both hands so they wouldn’t look too hard into her eyes. They did normal things like going out for ice cream, cooking grilled cheese, and sitting around the table doing homework. While Jason and Angelo watched cartoons in the morning, Margaret sipped coffee and tried not to think about the men outside and the bodies they left behind. Even with the case files safe at the office, the pictures still flashed behind her eyelids.

On a Monday morning, Web called her into his office, closed the door behind. His weathered face was open, his eyes quiet. “Alvarez,” he said, “tell me about the killer.”

She’d been off the medication for weeks, not planned at first. Starting to feel the darkness seep into her bones. Starting to see things clearer. “He has a message for us. Something we’re too stupid to understand. He’s above them, better than they are. Better than we are.” Her fingers twitched as she separated the window blinds. Web’s presence behind her didn’t register for another minute, when she blinked, sent it all away. “He’s due,” she whispered, feeling the tendrils of him still in her mind.

\--

A swell of pride came over Virgil Webster when Alvarez dropped the case files on his desk, slid into the chair across from him. He barely looked up. “Third body in three weeks. We’ve got a serial,” she announced. He didn’t bother opening the manila promises, just smiled and smoothed his hands across the varnished wood, telling Margaret to lead the way to the morgue. He wanted to see the girl firsthand.

Jane Doe didn’t disappoint, though the many who followed started a sense of dread spiraling through Web’s intestinal tract, an interior feeling that never spread to his face. Rough cuts through skin and muscle, done in a quick move – crown to chin, and then torn back, like wrapping paper. Alvarez donned a pair of gloves and lifted the flap, quickly dropping it, wincing.

“He took the hand, took a trophy from the scene.” She touched the girl’s bony wrist for a moment as well. Web’s eyes moved over her, looking for something.

\--

During the off weekends, Margaret stayed at Web’s place. She packed herself into an unobtrusive duffel bag and briefcase, and snuck into the pristine corners of his cherry-wood-paneling, dark-leather existence. She called him “Virge” off duty, and sometimes on, but “Web” when he pulled her hair back, the loose mass of it spilling across her bare back. Somehow, first names didn’t seem as intimate. Or maybe too much so.  
On a Saturday night, he slid the lock closed behind him and said, “Alvarez,” his tone gentle but serious, “tell me about the killer.” He dropped groceries on the counter, slowly unpacking the cans and bags and boxes first onto the marble-top, and then into the cabinets. He didn’t need to watch her. He knew she was unpacking herself, like so many goods, from his favorite chair, and stepping to the window to part his heavy curtains.

Her voice came far away when she spoke, as the last of the bags were emptied and Virgil Webster turned to face his protégé. “They’re new in town, the girls. White, young. Vulnerable. They all want something.” She tilted her head, staring out at the stars. “They want to be something.”

Web took one slow step forward. “And are they?” he pressed, tone even, smile almost ready.

Margaret turned to him, cold. She should have felt surprised, but she didn’t. “No,” she said, flat. “And he’s the only one who can see that.” Her fingers were quick, nimbly working at the buttons of her blouse, and the fabric – a stark white thing – fell to the mahogany flooring. “He makes them see it too.” Her eyes weren’t there, not all the way. She growled instead of gasped, but he fucked her anyway.

He should have seen the clues. (He saw the clues.) He didn’t know. (He knew.)

\--

When the Violent Crimes Unit received the call, an eighth victim, and rushed to the scene, he couldn’t shake the sick python-feeling in his stomach. She hadn’t responded to the alert, and he’d never prescribed to the idea that no news is good news. Still, it wasn’t _her_ until he brushed latex-covered fingers over her tattooed shoulder, stared into her blank eyes, saw her skinned face, realized her now-ruined hand would never touch him again.

For a moment, his mind went back to those nights; _Margaret sprawled on the bed, covered in costume shop fake blood, wearing a cheap department store negligee. He’d hovered over her chest with the knife, scratching thin red lines there, then grunted and mimed the ripping and plunging of his hand through the imaginary gore. Another un-sub, another heart, another victim; another profile. Of course, Alvarez had the audacity to giggle. So, he shoved the note in her mouth, where they’d found the others. A twisted valentine left by the thief of hearts, this one seemed to have a sense of humor, or a bizarre connection to reality. Web had let his fingers brush her lips, pressing the message into them, trying to find his motivation, his “Wish you were here,” scrawl on folded paper. She gagged for a moment, then calmed, staring wide-eyed at his hand colored red._

_“Tell me about the killer.”_

Margaret Alvarez wasn’t the eighth victim. At least, not in the traditional sense.

\--

This was the clearest she had ever heard him, in her mind. As she found the abandoned crack house, settled on the mattress upstairs, she even sensed her vision fading in and out, finding his. She felt a tingle as she revealed her brown skin; disappointment. She wasn’t who he wanted, not his M.O., but she was no one just the same.

She could almost hear the killer’s breath on her ear as her nails dug in, the first spike of pain sending thrills of energy through her body. “Wipe the slate clean. Become the nothing that you are.” And so she breathed and ground her teeth and tore her face bare, honest at last. She remembered, as the pain set in, another voice, darker and grittier at her ear when orgasms ripped through her body.

“Tell me about the killer,” Web would say. And now, finishing the work on her face, on her hand – pulling skin away in strips, Margaret smiled into the empty room. _That’s where we went wrong,_ she thought at last, _we’re not looking for a killer. They just die._

**3: Conjuring**

Rebecca dreams them into a dark room, herself bound on the cool floor and circled. Danny, Mel, Paul, Carter, in her periphery. In the dream, she locks eyes with him, with Web, and he kneels down before her to tighten the ropes. Her colleagues don’t flinch when she whimpers.  
Web presses his cold lips together. He covers her mouth with one hand, solid, and moves between her thighs with the other, and suddenly, Rebecca is very awake.

This is all an act, she realizes, conscious in her dream of five sets of eyes on her. And yet, it feels less like an act than anything she’s ever done. Every nerve is on fire. Web’s lips curl and he plucks responses from her like a harp. The ropes burn, the eyes close.

Open again, and the darkness expands, contracts, and she and he are inside one another and fingertips burn whitehot paths around her throat when she gasps, “Clearly not the unsub,” and arches against him.

**4: “She wants to see who she’s replacing.”**

It wasn’t twenty-four hours after finding Margaret’s body before he called in a new recruit.

Rebecca Locke belonged at the Hollis Mulwray Federal Building, despite what her initial psych report read. She was a sight to behold; all blonde hair and luggage slung. He’d seen the headshots, but spent years picturing her as she was then: Gone for eighteen months, until, as the report states, sweet little Becky just showed up on her parents’ doorstep, right as a rainstorm. Had he known, he would have traded favors, anything, to work the case. He would have given anything to see Becky’s eyes the way they were then. The darkness would have done him good.

She’s better than Margaret. He admits that.

Months later, he overhears Mel say something about the actress from “Captive Hearts,” how she didn’t have the right kind of spacey creepiness. Paul, of course, shakes his head. Danny offers some tidbit about how the actress is making ‘adult fare’ these days. Rebecca wouldn’t be curious about her porn star doppelganger. In fact, Web thinks, dropping files on his desk and closing the door behind him, she probably wouldn’t even know the name. She has a marvelous ability to block things from her past.

She’s in the basement, examining a corpse. Web’s already seen the prelims; he knows that Rebecca will be taking lead on this. The girl was missing for two years. She doesn’t appear to have been bound in any way, or even beaten. No marks on her face, her hands, her hips.

Of course, Rebecca down in the morgue, alone for so long is considered dangerous. She might do something rash. He can see, already, her hands shaking, turning at every shadow. He’ll come to her, but not before _he_ does.

Web knows his touch will shake away the old ghosts, but her eyes will look past him for hours to come. She’ll wish for someone to make sense of it all, and there he’ll be.


End file.
